“View” Equivocation Across Video Sites
May 27th, 2008
Today, we released a study clarifying what counts as a “view” across video sharing sites. This study was initially published last June to great fanfare, so we re-executed it under current conditions, this time testing 14 sites to see if views are counted for refreshes, watching more than half a video, watching a video to completion and watching embedded videos. To our surprise, what was once a disparate dissonance across sites is now close to standardizing. All but three video sites we tested log “views” once the player starts, no matter how much of a video is viewed. YouTube and Yahoo!, which formerly had stricter, IP address-based constraints, lessened their standards, now counting everything once a video starts playing. Blip and MetaCafe are lone holdouts to an IP address-based standard.
The study was picked up by the Los Angeles Times, Silicon Alley Insider, NewTeeVee and others. Here is a summary of the results:
| Site | Full View | >1/2 View | Refresh (Player Starts) |
Embed (>1/2 view) |
| AOL Uncut | Count | Count | Count | Count |
| Blip | One/IP addr. | One/IP addr. | One/IP addr. | One/IP addr. |
| Crackle | Count | Count | Count | Count |
| Dailymotion | Count | Count | No Count | No Count |
| Howcast | Count | Count | Count | Count |
| Metacafe | One/IP addr. | One/IP addr. | One/IP addr. | One/IP addr. |
| Myspace | Count | Count | Count | Count |
| Revver | Count | Count | Count | Count |
| Sclipo | Count | Count | Count | Count |
| Stupidvideos | Count | Count | Count | Count |
| Veoh | Count | Count | Count | Count |
| Viddler | Count | Count | Count | Count |
| Yahoo! Video | Count | Count | Count | Count |
| YouTube | Count | Count | Count | Count |
Entry Filed under: TubeMogul Research, Video Analytics